Kiera Vaclavik
188
and Aeneas are not restricted to the classical period, however, but continued to resonate and be recounted in the modern age. As several critics have observed, the nineteenth century was a particularly fertile
period for the katabatic narrative.
3 Less widely remarked is the fact
that katabasis was incorporated not only into adult works but also
those targeting a family audience or specifically juvenile readership.
Indeed some of the best-known, most celebrated works of the period
such as Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865,
originally entitled Alice’s Adventures Underground) and Jules Verne’s
Voyage au centre de la terre (1864) are built around a journey down
to and back from an underground locale. In Voyage au centre de la
terre, as in classical katabases, the journey through space is also a
journey back in time, although as I have argued elsewhere, the personal dimension is eliminated and the temporal parameters vastly extended.
4
Children’s literature also participates in the development in
this period of another form of underground story identified by Rosalind Williams in which the underworld becomes a place to live or
work instead of a place to visit.
5 Rather than the extraordinary destination of a once in a lifetime journey, the underground becomes a place
where a considerable amount of time is spent.
6 As Williams has
___________________________
text and English translation that the hero has passed into this underground realm.
When asked by his mother, “what brings you down to this world of death and darkness?”, Odysseus’s equally revealing response is that he “had to venture down to the
House of Death,/ to consult the shade of Tiresias” (my emphasis, Homer, The Odyssey, trans. by Robert Fagles (London: Penguin, 2001), XI, pp. 177, 186. Odysseus’s
presence in the underground is reinforced by the repeated use of the determiners
“here” and “this”, indicating proximity and immersion rather than distance.
3 Rosalind Williams, Notes on the Underground: An Essay on Technology, Society,
and the Imagination (Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press, 1990); Wendy Lesser, The
Life Below the Ground: A Study of the Subterranean in Literature and History (Boston/London: Faber & Faber, 1987); Lyle Thomas Williams, “Journeys to the Center of
the Earth: Descent and Initiation in Selected Science Fiction” (unpublished doctoral
dissertation, University of Indiana, 1983); Walter Strauss, Descent and Return: The
Orphic Theme in Modern Literature (London: OUP, 1971).
4 Kiera Vaclavik, “Jules Verne écrivain… de jeunesse: The Case of Voyage au centre
de la terre”, Australian Journal of French Studies, 42 (2005), 276-83.
5 Williams, Notes on the Underground, p. 10.
6 The colonization of the underground in these texts had real-life precedents: the
American physician John Corghan bought the famous Mammoth Cave in 1839 where
he installed consumptives in wooden and stone huts in order that they benefit from the
constant temperature and humidity thought to have significant healing properties. See
188
and Aeneas are not restricted to the classical period, however, but continued to resonate and be recounted in the modern age. As several critics have observed, the nineteenth century was a particularly fertile
period for the katabatic narrative.
3 Less widely remarked is the fact
that katabasis was incorporated not only into adult works but also
those targeting a family audience or specifically juvenile readership.
Indeed some of the best-known, most celebrated works of the period
such as Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865,
originally entitled Alice’s Adventures Underground) and Jules Verne’s
Voyage au centre de la terre (1864) are built around a journey down
to and back from an underground locale. In Voyage au centre de la
terre, as in classical katabases, the journey through space is also a
journey back in time, although as I have argued elsewhere, the personal dimension is eliminated and the temporal parameters vastly extended.
4
Children’s literature also participates in the development in
this period of another form of underground story identified by Rosalind Williams in which the underworld becomes a place to live or
work instead of a place to visit.
5 Rather than the extraordinary destination of a once in a lifetime journey, the underground becomes a place
where a considerable amount of time is spent.
6 As Williams has
___________________________
text and English translation that the hero has passed into this underground realm.
When asked by his mother, “what brings you down to this world of death and darkness?”, Odysseus’s equally revealing response is that he “had to venture down to the
House of Death,/ to consult the shade of Tiresias” (my emphasis, Homer, The Odyssey, trans. by Robert Fagles (London: Penguin, 2001), XI, pp. 177, 186. Odysseus’s
presence in the underground is reinforced by the repeated use of the determiners
“here” and “this”, indicating proximity and immersion rather than distance.
3 Rosalind Williams, Notes on the Underground: An Essay on Technology, Society,
and the Imagination (Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press, 1990); Wendy Lesser, The
Life Below the Ground: A Study of the Subterranean in Literature and History (Boston/London: Faber & Faber, 1987); Lyle Thomas Williams, “Journeys to the Center of
the Earth: Descent and Initiation in Selected Science Fiction” (unpublished doctoral
dissertation, University of Indiana, 1983); Walter Strauss, Descent and Return: The
Orphic Theme in Modern Literature (London: OUP, 1971).
4 Kiera Vaclavik, “Jules Verne écrivain… de jeunesse: The Case of Voyage au centre
de la terre”, Australian Journal of French Studies, 42 (2005), 276-83.
5 Williams, Notes on the Underground, p. 10.
6 The colonization of the underground in these texts had real-life precedents: the
American physician John Corghan bought the famous Mammoth Cave in 1839 where
he installed consumptives in wooden and stone huts in order that they benefit from the
constant temperature and humidity thought to have significant healing properties. See